Who are the losers? Gendered-migration, climate change, and the impact of large scale land acquisitions on food security in coastal Tanzania

Abstract

The recent wave of large scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in low-income countries has engendered intense debate partly because of its impact on livelihoods and ecology, with outcomes structured by complex unequal power relations at multiple scales. Together with the onslaught of climate change on livelihoods, LSLA is contributing to new, and exacerbating old vulnerabilities in ways that raise important questions for research. We examined the impact of LSLAs on food security disparities across multiple intersections of vulnerabilities: gender, migration, and climate change. Guided by political ecology concepts, we analyzed cross-sectional data (n = 1136) from Tanzania using multivariate ordinal logistic regression and post-estimation margins. The analyses revealed that male non-migrants compared with female non-migrants were 58 % more likely to report that LSLA was resulting in food insecurity. Individuals who experienced drought were 42 % less likely, while those who perceived temperature to be hotter (OR = 0.58, p ≤ 0.05), rapidly changing (OR = 0.21, p ≤ 0.01), or even stable (OR = 0.13, p ≤ 0.01) compared to those who perceived temperature to be colder were less likely to report that LSLA was resulting in food insecurity. While male non-migrants reported the highest probability (0.81) of experiencing food insecurity as a result of LSLAs, with the added effect of climate change, the impact of LSLAs on food insecurity is reduced among non-migrants but exacerbated among migrants. These findings suggest the need for policy priority on smallholder agriculture as a climate change adaptation strategy.